#Cockygate

[the-heart-of-leo]

I've just realized that I'm the keeper of a piece of lost media.

About 6 years ago, a self-published romance author by the name of Faleena Hopkins tried to trademark scum the word 'Cocky' and turned THE ENTIRE ROMANCE WRITER COMMUNITY AGAINST HER.

Of course she lost that trademark because as soon as a judge saw the case, he knew exactly what she was trying to do, and dismissed it.

There's a lot more to it, of course, and you can read about here on the wonderful Jenny Trout's blog (who is amazing and occasionally reads tarot cards on youtube livestreams while smoking pot. She also reviews bad romance books, chapter by chapter)

But shortly after Faleena Hopkins started getting backlash for the bullshit she was trying to pull, she did a facebook live stream while drunk as a skunk where she calls everyone haters, she had every right to trademark a commonly used romance term even though she changed the name of her series to include the word Cocky only AFTER other people used the term, and then rambles on for OVER AN HOUR on how YOU TOO CAN BE AS AMAZING AS HER!

And Jenny Trout did a reaction to the video on twitter

But here is where my lost media comes in.

I have this video saved on my computer.

I can not find it anywhere else: Not on youtube, not on google.

And since this is such a niche thing, I might be one of the few to still have this video.

So now I'm torn between uploading it somewhere so it's not completely lost or leaving it be (for now) as Hopkin's has had a bit of mental breakdown the last year (including disappearing from her home, showing up in a national park, arrested for speeding and avoiding arrest in a national park, and skipping her court date for the aforementioned arrest in a national park.)

I guess if anyone wants to see the trashfire video, then I'll either send it or upload it. It's over an hour and 40 minutes long...

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Rosemary Kirstein’s “The Steerswoman”

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (May 4) in VANCOUVER, then onto Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

For decades, scammy "book doctors" and vanity presses spun a tale about how Big Publishing was too conservative and risk-averse for really really adventurous books, and the only way to get your visionary work published was to pay them to fill your garage with badly printed books that you'd spend the rest of your life trying to get other people to read:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/04/self-publishing/

Like all successful grifts, this one worked because it wasn't entirely untrue. No, mainstream publishing isn't filled with corporate gatekeepers who relish the idea of keeping your brilliance from reaching its audience.

But.

But editors sometimes make bad calls. They reject books because of quirks of taste, or fleeting inattentiveness, or personal bias. In a healthy publishing industry – one with dozens of equal-sized presses, all commanding roughly comparable market-share, good books would never slip through the cracks. One publisher's misstep would be another's opportunity.

But after decades of mergers, the population of major publishers has dwindled to a mere Big Five (it was almost four, but the DOJ blocked Penguin Random House's acquisition of Simon & Schuster):

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-block-penguin-random-house-s-acquisition-rival-publisher-simon

This means that some good books definitely can't find a home in Big Publishing. If you miss with five editors, you can exhaust all your chances with the Big Five.

There's a second tier of great publishers, from data-driven juggernauts like Sourcebooks to boutique presses like Verso and Beacon Press, who publish wonderful books and are very good to their authors (I've published with four of the Big Five and half a dozen of the smaller publishers).

But even with these we-try-harder boutique publishers in the mix, there's a lot of space for amazing books that just don't fit with a "trad" publisher's program. These books are often labors of love by their creators, and that love is reciprocated by their readers. You can have my unbelievably gigantic Little Nemo in Slumberland collection when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of it:

https://memex.craphound.com/2006/09/25/gigantic-little-nemo-book-does-justice-to-the-loveliest-comic-ever/

And don't even think of asking to borrow my copy of Jack Womack's Flying Saucers are Real!:

https://memex.craphound.com/2016/10/03/flying-saucers-are-real-anthology-of-the-lost-saucer-craze/

I will forever cherish my Crad Kilodney chapbooks:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#intermediation

Then there's last year's surprise smash hit, Shift Happens, a two-volume, 750-page slipcased book recounting the history of the keyboard. I own one. It's fantastic:

https://glennf.medium.com/how-we-crowdfunded-750-000-for-a-giant-book-about-keyboard-history-c30e24c4022e

Then there's the whole world of indie Kindle books pitched at incredibly voracious communities of readers, especially the very long tail of very niche sub-sub-genres radiating off the woefully imprecise category of "paranormal romance." These books are landing at precisely the right spot for their readers, despite some genuinely weird behind-the-scenes feuds between their writers:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/16/17566276/cockygate-amazon-kindle-unlimited-algorithm-self-published-romance-novel-cabal

But as Sturgeon's Law has it: "90% of everything is shit." Having read slush – the pile of unsolicited manuscripts sent to publishers – I can tell you that a vast number of books get rejected from trad publishers because they aren't good books. I say this without intending any disparagement towards their authors and the creative impulses that drive them. But a publisher's job isn't merely to be good to writers – it's to serve readers, by introducing them to works they are apt to enjoy.

The vast majority of books that publishers pass on are not books that you will want to read, so it follows that the vast majority of self-published work that is offered on self-serve platforms like Kindle or pitched by hopeful writers at street fairs and book festivals is just not very good.

But sometimes you find someone's independent book and it's brilliant, and you get the double thrill of falling in love with a book and of fishing a glittering needle out of an unimaginably gigantic haystack.

(If you want to read an author who beautifully expresses the wonder of finding an obscure, self-published book that's full of unsuspected brilliance, try Daniel Pinkwater, whose Alan Mendelsohn, The Boy From Mars is eleven kinds of brilliant, but is also a marvelous tale of the wonders of weird used book stores with titles like KLONG! You Are a Pickle!):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Mendelsohn,_the_Boy_from_Mars

I also write books, and I am, in fact, presently in the midst of a long book-tour for my novel The Bezzle. Last month, I did an event in Cambridge, Mass with Randall "XKCD" Munroe that went great. We had a full house, and even after the venue caught fire (really!), everyone followed us across the street to another building, up five flights of stairs, and into another auditorium where we wrapped up the gig:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulnlSRbH80Y

Afterwards, our hosts from Harvard Berkman-Klein took us to a campus pizza joint/tiki bar for dinner and drinks, and we had a great chat about a great many things. Naturally, we talked about books we loved, and Randall said, "Hey, have you ever read Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman novels?"

(I hadn't.)

"They're incredible. All these different people kept recommending them to me, and they kept telling me that I would love them, but they wouldn't tell me what they were about because there's this huge riddle in them that's super fun to figure out for yourself:"

https://www.rosemarykirstein.com/the-books/

"The books were published in the eighties by Del Ray, and the cover of the first one had a huge spoiler on it. But the author got the rights back and she's self-published it" (WARNING: the following link has a HUGE SPOILER!):

https://www.rosemarykirstein.com/2010/12/the-difference/

"I got it and it was pretty rough-looking, but the book was so good. I can't tell you what it was about, but I think you'll really like it!"

How could I resist a pitch like that? So I ordered a copy:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-steerswoman-rosemary-kirstein/7900759

Holy moly is this a good novel! And yeah, there's a super interesting puzzle in it that I won't even hint at, except to say that even the book's genre is a riddle that you'll have enormous great fun solving.

Randall wasn't kidding about the book's package. The type looks to be default Microsoft fonts, the spine is printed slightly off-register, the typesetting has lots of gonks, and it's just got that semi-disposable feel of a print-on-demand title.

Without Randall's recommendation, I never would have even read this book closely enough to notice the glowing cover endorsement from Jo Walton, nor the fact that it was included in Damien Broderick and Paul Di Filippo's "101 Best Science Fiction Novels 1985-2010."

But I finished reading the first volume just a few minutes ago and I instantly ordered the next three in the series (it's planned for seven volumes, and the author says she plans on finishing it – I can't wait).

This book is such an unexpected marvel, a stunner of a novel filled with brilliant world-building, deft characterizations, a hard-driving plot and a bunch of great surprises. The fact that such a remarkable tale comes in such an unremarkable package makes it even more of a treasure, like a geode: unremarkable on the outside, a glittering blaze within.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/04/the-wulf/#underground-fave

[forthesanityofstorytellers]

Rocky the Cocky Squirrel

...I'll just say I wrote this during the whole "Cockygate" thing way back when and leave it at that. ----------------------------------------------------------------------

WC: 219

Poem. Esque.

Summary: A squirrel learns why it shouldn't be so cocky.

Warnings: It's...got the word cock in it. A lot. It's in reference to a chicken, but still.

There once was a squirrel named Rocky, Who grew up ever so Cocky, She sat up on her fence and twittered so neatly, Thought her words and her prose wove ever so sweetly. She looked down from her tree, And saw with dismay, That others were copying Her verbal bouquet. Unsure what to do, the Cocky squirrel cried, “Stop it now, or your end will be nigh!!” The dogs and the frogs and foxes galore, Looked up and laughed at the squirrel’s uproar, To which the squirrel cried “no more!” And made throwing acorns her chore.

But Rocky the Cocky squirrel didn’t know, That a Cocky Cock lived just next door. The Cocky Cock strutted and crowed, “YOU DON’T OWN THE RIGHTS, SO KNOCK IT OFF!!!”

But Rocky didn’t know about the Cocky Cock And didn’t know how easily her tree could rock, She tried to call her clan to block, But found all their doors were under lock.

The Cocky Cock crowed and threw rocks quite Cockily, As Rocky’s Cocky tree rocked like a bucked-off jockey, And while gawky Cocky Rocky screamed squawkily, She didn’t see coming the hungry hawky.

Cocky Rocky disappeared ever so Cockily, And left nothing behind but a not-hungry hawkily, The Cocky Cock next door looked on not shockily. Cocky Cocky Cock Cock Cockily.

[imetyouonljpodcast]

I MET YOU ON LJ: A Fandom & Nonsense Podcast

Episode #007: We Need To Talk About J.K Rowling: An Interview with Heidi Tandy AKA Heidi8

We need to talk about J.K. Rowling and what the heck to do now after a lifetime of loving Harry Potter! In this very special episode of I Met You On LJ, Maggie and V interview someone right in the thick of things: FictionAlley creator, OTW volunteer, and intellectual property attorney Heidi Tandy, also known as Heidi8. Tandy has worked on behalf of fandom in fair use and copyright cases for the last two decades, and talks with V and Maggie about early Harry Potter fan conventions, the dark ages of FanFiction.net, and what to do now that J.K. Rowling has revealed herself to be as dark and twisted as a horcrux.

This Episode Covers…

harry potter • j.k. rowling • intellectual property • fair use • copyright law • fanfiction • fan conventions • @copperbadge​ • azkatraz • lumos • nimbus 2003 • livejournal • infinitus • sirius black • the peril of spoilers • creator responsibility • death of the author • ao3 • fiction alley • schnoogle • f•r•i•e•n•d•s • organization for transformative works • cockygate • harry potter for grown-ups • yahoo! groups • fanfiction.net

LISTEN ON… Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, LibSyn, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or your favorite RSS podcatcher! Search “I Met You On LJ”!

SUPPORT I Met You On LJ on Patreon to get community exclusive events, cute citrus stickers, audio bonus shows, and a lemon-limey mug for coffee or tea! Search “I Met You On LJ” on Patreon!

THANK YOU for helping I Met You On LJ surpass 1,050+ listeners in its first six weeks! We love you and want to hear from you, your fannish friends, your cool aunt... maybe not your mom, just in case. But we didn’t think we would hit this milestone for months, so thank you, and keep listening! :)

Show Notes & Resources Under the Cut.

Daniel Radcliffe’s full response to J.K. Rowling for The Trevor Project.

I realize that certain press outlets will probably want to paint this as in-fighting between J.K. Rowling and myself, but that is really not what this is about, nor is it what’s important right now. While Jo is unquestionably responsible for the course my life has taken, as someone who has been honored to work with and continues to contribute to The Trevor Project for the last decade, and just as a human being, I feel compelled to say something at this moment.

Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I. According to The Trevor Project, 78% of transgender and nonbinary youth reported being the subject of discrimination due to their gender identity. It’s clear that we need to do more to support transgender and nonbinary people, not invalidate their identities, and not cause further harm.

I am still learning how to be a better ally, so if you want to join me in learning more about transgender and nonbinary identities check out The Trevor Project’s Guide to Being an Ally to Transgender and Nonbinary Youth. It’s an introductory educational resource that covers a wide range of topics, including the differences between sex and gender, and shares best practices on how to support transgender and nonbinary people.

To all the people who now feel that their experience of the books has been tarnished or diminished, I am deeply sorry for the pain these comments have caused you. I really hope that you don’t entirely lose what was valuable in these stories to you. If these books taught you that love is the strongest force in the universe, capable of overcoming anything; if they taught you that strength is found in diversity, and that dogmatic ideas of pureness lead to the oppression of vulnerable groups; if you believe that a particular character is trans, nonbinary, or gender fluid, or that they are gay or bisexual; if you found anything in these stories that resonated with you and helped you at any time in your life — then that is between you and the book that you read, and it is sacred. And in my opinion nobody can touch that. It means to you what it means to you and I hope that these comments will not taint that too much.

Love always, Dan

[heywriters]

oh, she dead. like, no one in this Reddit thread on the subject seemed to realize that, but the moment she died AO3 categories for her work burst into life. some people even uploaded backdated works they had saved ever since the og crackdown (x). that vengeful presence is past tense, though the threat of a repeat looms large ("Cockygate," while not fanfic-related, was a laughable attempt at author overreach).

Found a link that feels like required reading for many of you.

Where has Anne Rice fanfiction gone?

(excerpts below)

BUT DOESN'T ANNE RICE HAVE THE LEGAL RIGHT TO TELL THEM TO STOP? WHY DIDN'T THEY JUST STOP WRITING AND LEAVE IT AT THAT? Yes she does. However this was not an issue of Anne Rice asking the fanfic writers to stop. If that had been the case there would have been no problem. The problem was that she was not asking or even telling, she was using the excuse of fanfic to cyber-stalk and harass the fanfic authors, even after said authors removed the illegal fanfic from their sites. Not having the money or legal resources to defend themselves against this, hiding was the only option left.

DID SOMEBODY TRY MAKING MONEY USING ANNE RICE FANFICTION? WAS THAT WHAT CAUSED THE PROBLEM? No. At no time did any fanfic author make money using Anne Rice fanfiction in any way, non-profit or otherwise. The only times that money changed hands were when fanfic authors and fans bought Anne's own books.

All this drama, both old and recent, proves that authors can come down on your fanworks at any time knowing you won't have a leg to stand on. Quite often they are justified as it is their hard work you are playing with after all.

I suspect that younger members of fandom who grew up with instant access to a steady stream of fanfic on their devices don't realize what a luxury that is and how easily it can be taken away. And not in a "total cultural overthrow" type of way, but with a simple phone call from one writer to their attorney or one mega-corp to their army of lawyers.

It has happened many times before and can happen again.

The Fine Line Between Fan Art, Fan Fiction, and Finding Yourself Sued

This whole article is worth a read for fan creators, especially those of you trying to make an honest buck off your work.

(excerpt below)

How Do You Avoid a Lawsuit? Due to the popularity of fan fiction and fan art, many content owners have begun proactively providing guidelines to their fanbase. Wizards of the Coast (Dungeons & Dragons),[6] CBS and Paramount Pictures (Star Trek),[7] and EPIC Games[8] have all developed policies to inform fans of what they can and cannot do legally. Additionally, usually as long as the fan content is non-commercial, it is not a problem with copyright holders. Regardless, unless the work is completely original, fans should be careful about their creations.

Additionally, try to be smarter than this guy who attempted to sue Amazon for the rights to Lord of the Rings.

[caitlynlynch]

Update on Cockygate 2: 2 Dark 2 Cocky; looks like Christine Feehan has listened. Suzan Tisdale, a fairly big-name indie author, apparently knows her and reached out. Whether Feehan had seen the furore on Twitter is unknown, but apparently she listened to Tisdale and is withdrawing all the ‘single word’ applications.

What happens from here on is unknown; my guess is that she’ll probably file for ��Dark Carpathians’ and nobody will give a rats because that’s a perfectly fine series name that isn’t going to stop anybody else using either word in their series or book titles. The community will be watching, though.

Hopefully, the fact that even a big-name mainstream author - because whether you’ve read her or not, whether you think her heyday is past or not, go into any library and you’ll almost certainly find Feehan’s books on the shelves - can get hammered over this sort of overly-broad rights grab, will make other authors think twice before spending their money.

If you’re interested to see what sort of things people DO file trademarks for, I suggest you follow cockybot on Twitter. Set up after cockygate to track exactly this sort of thing and warn the community BEFORE the trademark is granted and it costs serious money to fight back, Cockybot is our canary in the coalmine.

[deliriumbubbles]

#Cockygate #ByeFaleena

This woman is now having her lawyer threaten the man challenging her trademark on the word “cocky.” She is both trying to get a RESTRAINING ORDER and COUNTERSUING the lawyer and Tara Crescent... Crescent, by the way, has her Cocky Series, which PREDATES Faleena Hopkins trademark claim jumping.

Geez. This asshole.

And can I just say this girl is so fucking stupid. Her brand is a series of brothers. Crescent’s brand is MFM threesomes! Can you.... Can you not?? What the fuck dumbass?

I know, though. It’s so she can weed out her perceived competition and scam some money off of people who aren’t able to get lawyers.

[lenfaz]

Fanfiction Cocky week, anyone?

As many books are being pulled on Amazon for having cocky on the title, the keywords and even reviews are being erased for having the word, how about we reclaim our time word in one of the spaces we still can?

is anyone up for a fanfiction cocky week in protest/solidarity with the romance world? any fandom, any pairing, any rating, just post fics with Cocky on the title?

[catfirebrand]

...it's Cockygate all over again

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/4677117-jasmine-crockett-trademark-bleach-blonde-bad-built-butch-body-marjorie-taylor-greene/

Oh.

That's just... great.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

This Tuesday (Jul 18), I’m hosting the first Clarion Summer Write-In Series, an hour-long, free drop-in group writing and discussion session. It’s in support of the Clarion SF/F writing workshop’s fundraiser to offer tuition support to students:

https://mailchi.mp/theclarionfoundation/clarion-write-ins

#20yrsago Mickey Mouse offs himself https://memex.craphound.com/2003/07/17/mickey-mouse-offs-himself/

#15yrsago I am the Very Model of a Modern SF Novelist https://jimhines.livejournal.com/382703.html

#15yrsago Cop busts guy for taking his pic: “It’s illegal to take a picture of a law enforcement officer… if you don’t give it to me, you’re going to jail” https://web.archive.org/web/20080717072712/http://www.tricities.com/tri/news/local/article/man_arrested_for_unlawful_photography/11576/

#10yrsago Anil Dash’s 10 Rules of Internet https://web.archive.org/web/20130721034729/http://dashes.com/anil/2013/07/rules-of-internet.html

#10yrsago Apple’s mobile devices have a secret list of “sensitive” words that don’t autocomplete https://web.archive.org/web/20130722005603/https://newsbeastlabs.tumblr.com/post/55590097779/today-we-published-a-data-story-looking-at-how-ios

#10yrsago Don’t worry, we only spy on terrorists (worry, because everyone we don’t like is a “terrorist”) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/mission-creep-when-everything-is-terrorism/277844/

#10yrsago Death toll from the American anti-vaccine movement https://web.archive.org/web/20130714203456/https://www.jennymccarthybodycount.com/Anti-Vaccine_Body_Count/Home.html

#10yrsago Why librarians are needed more than ever in the 21st century https://web.archive.org/web/20130719020216/http://www.bookpage.com/the-book-case/2010/04/14/neil-gaiman-talks-about-his-love-of-libraries/

#5yrsago China uses sewage surveillance to detect drugs in urine and feces https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05728-3

#5yrsago Venmo’s “public by default” transactions reveal drug deals, breakups, more https://22-8miles.com/public-by-default/

#5yrsago Pounded in the butt by my own dark SEO: the weird, true story of #Cockygate https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/16/17566276/cockygate-amazon-kindle-unlimited-algorithm-self-published-romance-novel-cabal

[christinaroseandrews]

You Don’t Know Me Masterpost

A few weeks ago, I did a thing. A stupid thing. An unintelligent thing. But a thing regardless.

I read Faleena Hopkins, the author infamous for perpetuating the travesty known as Cockygate, book You Don’t Know Me.

It was bad.

Really Bad.

How bad you ask? It took me multiple posts to get through the bad. So to save you from having to go look for them all. I’ve assembled a handy-dandy post with all the links for your viewing pleasure.

The bad decision.

My thoughts while reading:

Post 1

Post 2

The never-ending ranty review of doom!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

And now that I’ve made this post, I never have to think of this again!

Yay!

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

OMG so apparently a romance author fucking SUCCEEDED in trademarking the word “cocky” in reference to titles of a romance novel series. How the hell that happened, I have no idea. But now she’s been reporting a bunch of Amazon titles for including the word and sending bizarro emails (herself btw not from a lawyer) to the authors threatening legal action. 

And per law, Amazon has been taking down the books. She’s managed to basically temporarily shut down her competition but holy hell she’s going to get sued five ways to sunday for this. Idk how she ever thought this would end well.

This whole thing is a shitshow. 

[alexa-santi-author]

Yeah, I’ve said before that my main worry with ChatGPT and other AI writing programs is less that they’ll be “too good,” but that scammers who are already plagiarizing books for a quick profit (like Cobalt Fairy) will be able to use AI to plagiarize more quickly and easily and not need human intervention to do it. It’s the flooding of the market that worries me since it’s already so hard to break through the clutter. Especially once places like Amazon decide to make “custom” stories available so they can cut out those pesky royalty-demanding authors altogether. AI already seems to be a factor in the decreasing royalty cut from Kindle Unlimited.

(There have always been KU scammers — that was the actual origin of “Cockygate” — but why does Amazon have to make KU scamming so quick and easy?)

The visual AI programs are much more clearly plagiarism-based than the text ones, IMO.

I saw another anti-AI post where the first words out of someone's mouth was "Plagiarism!" That is why it's so difficult to have reasonable discussions about these new tools--and how they be useful as tools--because people start screeching, "You're not a real writer!"

The article at the core of the post, however, is worth discussing because, yup, it is exactly what the antis are yelling about. The post, by the way, did not include a link to the article, just a screenshot of Publisher Weekly's Twitter promo of said article. Which is actually a rewrite of a Newsweek article about a man who was about to release his 97th ChatGPT-written "novel." I'll explain the quotes later on.

I've included a link to the original article because it's worth a read no matter what side of the argument you're on. The headline is absolutely clickbait. It's also full of self-aggrandizing bullshit.

Tim Boucher (the article is written by him, or, rather, 60% written by ChatGPT by his own admission) admits to making $2000 over the course of 7 months. Hardly the thousands of the headline. He's sold 574 books as of the article, which equals out to an average 5-6 copies per book, or an average of just under $21 per book. The books are 2,000 to 5,000 words each, so they're not really novels, but serial chapters. He is also, by the way, not selling on Amazon or any other distributor, possibly because some of the stories are too short for them to accept.

It also means he has an extremely small, niche audience who are interested in "dystopian pulp sci-fi with compelling AI world-building." He writes "majority of my readers being repeat buyers, many having bought more than a dozen titles. In one case, a reader has bought more than thirty titles."

I found this paragraph particularly illuminating:

"It's very difficult, for example, to have longer written pieces that maintain a coherent single storyline or character arc. So instead, I've tended to lean into short "flash" fiction slice-of-life collections, interspersed with fictional encyclopedia entries that deliver world-building and backstory, and point the reader towards other volumes where they can continue down the rabbit holes that appeal to them the most."

Right there is the issue with current LLM programs. You can get a coherent storyline and character arc with ChatGPT or Sudowrite, but it takes manipulation on the author's part. It takes being willing to put in the work to revise and massage the outlines. Dear god, don't use it to write scenes, because the quality of dialogue and description is horrendous.

This guy isn't. He's only willing to put in 6-8 hours to create and publish a book, which may include generating the cover and any brainstorming. What he is doing is the tech boy grift of inflating what the program is capable of and his own accomplishments. He's trying to shout, "I am a disruptor! I am the future!" (And taking a look at his website, he's also a conspiracy theorist about underground cities in Antartica.)

Sadly, this is exactly the type of person other tech bros who might be making decisions are going to listen to. And because he's publicity-hungry, he's making everyone else who is trying to use these tools to assist, not replace, the process look like a grifter as well.

Oh, and I can't help including this article written in response to the Newsweek one.

[areiton]

Today in Romancelandia

#Cockygate went to court and the judge denied the TRO and ordered Faleena to pay court costs and $5k to the defendants. Said that readers are familiar with romance and wording and that the trademark was weak at best.

So what I'm getting is--authors can still use Cocky (win for the author sued and the anthology Cocktales) but the TM hasn't been overturned (yet).

And I'm still over here giggling that they got up in a court of law and argued over the word Cocky. And that the suit was brought by someone calling their company Hop Hop Productions.

how is that NOT funny??

More info here https://twitter.com/eunapark/status/1002595231651557377?s=19

Support affected authors here:

Tara Crescent: https://amzn.to/2xzPYjk

Cocktales: https://amzn.to/2ssYA5o

[respectingromance]

For anyone who doesn’t want to read through court transcripts to find the funny bits, here’s a solid summary.

[reasse]

On June 4th, a group of lawyers shuffled into a federal court in Manhattan to argue over two trademark registrations. The day’s hearing was the culmination of months of internet drama — furious blog posts, Twitter hashtags, YouTube videos, claims of doxxing, and death threats.

The lawyers carried with them full-color exhibits of the trademarks in context. First up, two shirtless men with stethoscopes, embracing a woman, with the words Her Cocky Doctors boldly printed below. Next: two shirtless men flanking a woman in a too-big firefighter’s jacket, with the words Her Cocky Firefighters emblazoned in the same font.

“What is in the content of Her Cocky Firefighters?” asked the judge, surveying the exhibits.

“It appears to be a male-female-male romance,” said a lawyer for one of the defendants. “Beyond that, I imagine it involves one or two of the male characters is a firefighter.”

The judge looked over Her Cocky Doctors. “Two male figures. One seems to be wearing a stethoscope, indicating he is a doctor, but he is stripped to the waist.”

“Doesn’t look like my doctor, your Honor,” said the lawyer drily.

They were gathered there that day because one self-published romance author was suing another for using the word “cocky” in her titles. And as absurd as this courtroom scene was — with a federal judge soberly examining the shirtless doctors on the cover of an “MFM Menage Romance” — it didn’t even begin to scratch the surface.

The fight over #Cockygate, as it was branded online, emerged from the strange universe of Amazon Kindle Unlimited, where authors collaborate and compete to game Amazon’s algorithm. Trademark trolling is just the beginning: There are private chat groups, ebook exploits, conspiracies to seed hyperspecific trends like “Navy SEALs” and “mountain men,” and even a controversial sweepstakes in which a popular self-published author offered his readers a chance to win diamonds from Tiffany’s if they reviewed his new book.

Much of what’s alleged is perfectly legal, and even technically within Amazon’s terms of service. But for authors and fans, the genre is also a community, and the idea that unethical marketing and algorithmic tricks are running rampant has embroiled their world in controversy. Some authors even believe that the financial incentives set up by Kindle Unlimited are reshaping the romance genre — possibly even making it more misogynistic.

A genre that mostly features shiny, shirtless men on its covers and sells ebooks for 99 cents a pop might seem unserious. But at stake are revenues sometimes amounting to a million dollars a year, with some authors easily netting six figures a month. The top authors can drop $50,000 on a single ad campaign that will keep them in the charts — and see a worthwhile return on that investment.

  In other words, self-published romance is no joke.